On Saturday, the Ukrainian armed forces reported on their Facebook page that Russia had lost an additional 25 tanks, bringing the total number of such vehicles reportedly destroyed since the start of the wide-scale invasion on February 24 to 2,034. In its daily update, Ukraine also said Russia had now lost a total of 4,403 armored fighting vehicles, with 37 destroyed in a single day. “The enemy suffered the greatest losses in the directions of Donetsk and Kryvyi Rih,” his statement on Facebook said, referring to the center and east of the country. The UK Ministry of Defense said in May that Russia was losing a large number of tanks and that Moscow had taken 50-year-old T-62 tanks out of storage for use by its Southern Group of Forces (SGF). Burnt Russian tanks at a makeshift dump in Mariupol on August 26, 2022 Getty Images Meanwhile, the death toll of Russian troops is also nearing 50,000, according to the latest figures from Ukraine, which said another 350 were killed, bringing the total to 49,050. The exact number of losses of Russian troops and equipment is difficult to verify. Moscow rarely discloses its military casualties and last released official figures for 1,351 soldiers killed in late March. Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on Ukraine’s latest assessment. Meanwhile, the governor of Donetsk region, Pavlo Kirilenko, said on Saturday that Russian troops launched overnight rocket attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. He wrote on Telegram that there was damage to homes and businesses but no casualties. It comes amid a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the country’s south as Kiev’s forces focus on the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which was captured by Russia early in the war and has significant strategic and political value. In an interview with independent news agency Meduza, military analyst Rob Lee said it was unclear whether Ukraine had the equipment or the soldiers with enough training to carry out the military attack. Lee expected a “grinding type of attack” where Ukrainian forces would retake cities “but it takes time” and “may require a lot of artillery.” “I think Ukraine wants to make the position of Russian forces west of the Dnieper unsustainable,” he told the newspaper, “Basically what they’re trying to do is make it more costly for Russia to try to hold Kherson.” That included targeting bridges or “anything within HIMARS range,” he said, referring to the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS), which have allowed Kiev forces to strike the Antonovsky railway line and road bridges they have pin down Russia’s forces.
